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> From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much Which research? From my experience, personalized ads per

> From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much Which research? From my experience, personalized ads perform ~50% better than non-personalized ads. This would also explain why Google and Facebook are fighting tooth and nail to keep their tracking infrastructure.

nojito 5y ago
Location targeting isn’t effective. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mksc.2019.1188 https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mksc.2019.118... Google are fighting tooth and nail to protect the illusion that their ads work.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Location data is very important for search. Try turning on a VPN from another country, opening an incognito window and doing a google search for 'pizza'. See how the results are nearly useless...? A bunch of delivery services that don't deliver in your country, who want payment in a currency you don't have, and all written in a language you don't speak. Location at the local level matters less, but even so it makes some search results substantially more useful. That is a benefit that other search providers (who don't have strong control of the browser/platform) will not have. It makes the moat bigger.
  - codyb 5y ago
    Couldn’t just search for “pizza in Brooklyn” then? It’s not that onerous.
    - stubish 5y ago
      This isn't normal? Due to ISP internal networking, my exposed IP address either gets geolocated to my state capital or a state capital on the other side of the continent. And I like it that way. Wrong country might be annoying, but preferred language will get that right enough.
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      Brooklyn, Jamaica, got it. Even if you write Brooklyn USA, there are 22 places called Brooklyn in the USA. So now your search term is "Pizza in Brooklyn, NY, USA". And now you want to search for the cost of a taxi... "Taxi prices in Brooklyn, NY, USA". And now you want to know who won the baseball... "Who won the baseball, in USA". (Baseball means other things in other countries) It's a staggering number of queries where the location changes the interpretation of what you're looking for, which changes the results.
  - hedora 5y ago
    I get mistargeted geographic ads all the time; not on a VPN. Heck, I even get ads in the wrong language. Hint: Instead of noticing that I’ve been doing manual labor recently, and inferring that I’m not a native English speaker, just use contextual targeting: show me ads in the same language as the content I’m watching. Ad blockers are making the problems tracking-based much, much worse. Whatever signal is left after people block aggressively block trackers is actually just noise. Hopefully the market will see this and self-correct.
  - nojito 5y ago
    I’m linking to an actual study on location targeting effectiveness. Why are your anecdotes relevant?
- retpirato 5y ago
  See https://swisscows.com/web?query=pizza&region=iv https://swisscows.com/web?query=pizza&region=iv. results do change depending on where you set your location to or if you don't set a location. Here's another one: https://www.qwant.com/?q=pizza&t=web&locale=en_GB https://www.qwant.com/?q=pizza&t=web&locale=en_GB
QuadrupleA 5y ago
Here's one study - 1st link is a ZdNet summary about it, and 2nd is a direct link to the paper: https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-research-shows-personalized-ads-are-just-barely-more-efficient-than-dumb-ads/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-research-shows-personalize... https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/05/WEIS_2019_paper_38.pdf https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/...
- nwellnhof 5y ago
  It depends a lot on the content. If you're targeting a lucrative niche, contextual ads can be effective. But for the majority of (mostly low-quality) content, it's hard to find well-matched ads. The study you cited is based on "a rich dataset of millions of advertising transactions completed across multiple websites owned by a large media company". It's probably not that representative.
  - rodgerd 5y ago
    I'm glad that your anecdotes trump an actual study.
wumpus 5y ago
You shouldn't lump search ads in with display ads -- search ads are relevant to the search terms, and are much more valuable than display ads. Search ads get a much smaller lift from personalization.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hanspeter 5y ago
  Well, Google lump search and display ads together themselves. You can run display ads as retargeting campaigns from search ads. > Search ads get a much smaller lift from personalization. Search itself has seen huge improvements from personalization. It's hard to imagine that the same shouldn't be the case for the ads shown for a particular query as with the results.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    My search has gotten a lot worse with personalisation, i get better results in incognito mode. And what's the deal with "hard to imagine"? At some point it was hard to imagine we didnt have any witches. What the evidence?
EastSmith 5y ago
DuckDuckGo have said that they make less money, because they use only the search term not other data/tracking. But they still make money.
- dheera 5y ago
  Big companies have "fiduciary duty" to do the thing that gets them the most money within legal bounds, and not the ethically right thing. As in, they have a duty to breach ethics for profit as long as it's legal. Stupid concept which I wish we could abolish but that's the way the economy is currently setup.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    That’s not what a fiduciary duty is. The fiduciary duty is for a broker dealer to act in your best interests rather than rip you off. A company’s management has a duty to shareholders to work on behalf of the shareholders and not on behalf of their own well being. That usually means profit because that’s what most shareholders own the company for, not for charity. But there is no particular duty to maximize it at all costs. Damage to reputation and legal risk and the like are real concerns. If anything, it’s the self-interested managers violating their duty who cut the most corners and burn goodwill, in the name of hitting short term goals and chasing their bonus.
    - xmprt 5y ago
      As an example, if shareholders invest in your company despite saying you will never show targeted ads then they can't sue you for not showing targeted ads to increase profits.
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
      Yes, company has fiduciary duty towards its shareholders. That term applies to any situation where there is trust involved, not only brokers. Though it's mostly applied to financial advisors and fund managers.
  - mdoms 5y ago

nojito 5y ago

Location targeting isn’t effective. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mksc.2019.1188 https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mksc.2019.118... Google are fighting tooth and nail to protect the illusion that their ads work.

londons_explore 5y ago
Location data is very important for search. Try turning on a VPN from another country, opening an incognito window and doing a google search for 'pizza'. See how the results are nearly useless...? A bunch of delivery services that don't deliver in your country, who want payment in a currency you don't have, and all written in a language you don't speak. Location at the local level matters less, but even so it makes some search results substantially more useful. That is a benefit that other search providers (who don't have strong control of the browser/platform) will not have. It makes the moat bigger.
- codyb 5y ago
  Couldn’t just search for “pizza in Brooklyn” then? It’s not that onerous.
  - stubish 5y ago
    This isn't normal? Due to ISP internal networking, my exposed IP address either gets geolocated to my state capital or a state capital on the other side of the continent. And I like it that way. Wrong country might be annoying, but preferred language will get that right enough.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    Brooklyn, Jamaica, got it. Even if you write Brooklyn USA, there are 22 places called Brooklyn in the USA. So now your search term is "Pizza in Brooklyn, NY, USA". And now you want to search for the cost of a taxi... "Taxi prices in Brooklyn, NY, USA". And now you want to know who won the baseball... "Who won the baseball, in USA". (Baseball means other things in other countries) It's a staggering number of queries where the location changes the interpretation of what you're looking for, which changes the results.
- hedora 5y ago
  I get mistargeted geographic ads all the time; not on a VPN. Heck, I even get ads in the wrong language. Hint: Instead of noticing that I’ve been doing manual labor recently, and inferring that I’m not a native English speaker, just use contextual targeting: show me ads in the same language as the content I’m watching. Ad blockers are making the problems tracking-based much, much worse. Whatever signal is left after people block aggressively block trackers is actually just noise. Hopefully the market will see this and self-correct.
- nojito 5y ago
  I’m linking to an actual study on location targeting effectiveness. Why are your anecdotes relevant?
retpirato 5y ago
See https://swisscows.com/web?query=pizza&region=iv https://swisscows.com/web?query=pizza&region=iv. results do change depending on where you set your location to or if you don't set a location. Here's another one: https://www.qwant.com/?q=pizza&t=web&locale=en_GB https://www.qwant.com/?q=pizza&t=web&locale=en_GB

QuadrupleA 5y ago

Here's one study - 1st link is a ZdNet summary about it, and 2nd is a direct link to the paper: https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-research-shows-personalized-ads-are-just-barely-more-efficient-than-dumb-ads/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-research-shows-personalize... https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/05/WEIS_2019_paper_38.pdf https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/...

nwellnhof 5y ago
It depends a lot on the content. If you're targeting a lucrative niche, contextual ads can be effective. But for the majority of (mostly low-quality) content, it's hard to find well-matched ads. The study you cited is based on "a rich dataset of millions of advertising transactions completed across multiple websites owned by a large media company". It's probably not that representative.
- rodgerd 5y ago
  I'm glad that your anecdotes trump an actual study.

wumpus 5y ago

You shouldn't lump search ads in with display ads -- search ads are relevant to the search terms, and are much more valuable than display ads. Search ads get a much smaller lift from personalization.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hanspeter 5y ago
Well, Google lump search and display ads together themselves. You can run display ads as retargeting campaigns from search ads. > Search ads get a much smaller lift from personalization. Search itself has seen huge improvements from personalization. It's hard to imagine that the same shouldn't be the case for the ads shown for a particular query as with the results.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  My search has gotten a lot worse with personalisation, i get better results in incognito mode. And what's the deal with "hard to imagine"? At some point it was hard to imagine we didnt have any witches. What the evidence?

EastSmith 5y ago

DuckDuckGo have said that they make less money, because they use only the search term not other data/tracking. But they still make money.

dheera 5y ago
Big companies have "fiduciary duty" to do the thing that gets them the most money within legal bounds, and not the ethically right thing. As in, they have a duty to breach ethics for profit as long as it's legal. Stupid concept which I wish we could abolish but that's the way the economy is currently setup.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  That’s not what a fiduciary duty is. The fiduciary duty is for a broker dealer to act in your best interests rather than rip you off. A company’s management has a duty to shareholders to work on behalf of the shareholders and not on behalf of their own well being. That usually means profit because that’s what most shareholders own the company for, not for charity. But there is no particular duty to maximize it at all costs. Damage to reputation and legal risk and the like are real concerns. If anything, it’s the self-interested managers violating their duty who cut the most corners and burn goodwill, in the name of hitting short term goals and chasing their bonus.
  - xmprt 5y ago
    As an example, if shareholders invest in your company despite saying you will never show targeted ads then they can't sue you for not showing targeted ads to increase profits.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
    Yes, company has fiduciary duty towards its shareholders. That term applies to any situation where there is trust involved, not only brokers. Though it's mostly applied to financial advisors and fund managers.
- mdoms 5y ago